Tuesday 10 July 2018

Changing way to buy medicines

What I read

According to "Pill-popping: Amazon takes a big step into online pharma" (2018), last year Amazon got into medicine business by selling over-the-counter medicines such as aspirin and vitamins and launched Basic Care line to sell medical supplies. Now it has expanded by taking over PillPack, an online pharmacy. This deal make Amazon be able to sell drugs in 50 states where PillPack has licenses. Most prescriptions has be to picked up in person, but if Amazon can make the process easier, it will be easily sell medicine like its other retail products. It will possess medical health records; therefore, by combining Big Data to this, Amazon might generate more revenue and might eventually disrupt American health-care system.
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My response 

It can be seen from Amazon's logo that it conveys a hidden message of A-to-Z, meaning that anything can be found in Amazon online store. Now it has confirmed its ambition by buying PillPack and now sells medicines. Other brick-and-mortar pharmacy might have to make a change to survive. Though it might take some time before people feel comfortable buying drugs from a website, but the past few years have shown that people are more open to technology than they are before. Though it is still hard to elderly to accept these big changes in life, but the next generation will definitely comfortably go with the flow.


I don't think this would happen soon in Thailand, but it is a sign that someday in the future we might be able to buy drugs online as well. However, some people might also find it easier to but drugs they shouldn't such as morphine or cough syrup which can be used as an ingredient in making an addictive drug. Theoretically, buyers need prescription to purchase, but it might be easier for these people to come up with a fake prescription and deceive into buying it if the transaction is done online. Hence, selling medicine via internet should be closely monitored.
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My question

How do you think your life would be like if you can simply buy any medicines online?
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Reference

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4 comments:

  1. Unknown12 July 2018 at 00:11

    Although it will be much more convenient to buy any medicine online, I am afraid about the safety of the buyers. Not everyone in this world all has knowledge about medicines, that's why we have pharmacist for giving advice and choosing the most appropriate drug for each patients specifically. For an example, if you have a rash on the skin, how do you know whether to choose steroids or anti-histamine drugs or anti-pruritic drugs or just a cream to relieve the symptom? And if you choose steroid, there are more than hundreds of different types of it. I think, it might be risky for some people to buy over-the-counter drugs (medicines that can be sold directly without prescription) via online without any advice from pharmacists. So, selling medicines via online should be monitored strictly.

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  2. Anonymous12 July 2018 at 00:26

    I think about two things when I am reading. While I can buy medicine online, can I buy all kinds of medicines, even non-domestic drugs? Can I buy medicine as easily as buying clothes on a foreign website? If it can be achieved, maybe it's a good news for Chinese, because the price of non-domestic drugs usually very expensive in China. Certainly, it's not can be true. The second thing is we have had the medicine online shops, I can buy medicine on an app, it just take for less than 30 minutes to sent to my home, and this kind of shop is 24 hours opened. You can buy anytime if you need. I didn't try this kind of apps, so I didn't know what kind of medicine can be sell in this app. But do you think the app is like Amazon selling medicine? By the way, I just knew the meaning of Amazon's logo. It's very interesting.

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  3. Peter AUA13 July 2018 at 19:29

    I wonder: are the laws requiring prescriptions for many drugs just and justified? I think that the justification for a restriction on what people may freely choose to do must be that their action is or is likely to be a direct danger to others, which is why drinking the drug alcohol in red wine over dinner with friends is not illegal, while driving home after dinner is illegal: getting drunk might hurt the person who does it, but is no great threat to others, unlike driving under the influence of the drug, which is a serious danger to others, as Thailand's high road toll proves, with around 50% of road deaths involving this highly popular drug of addiction.

    Perhaps it would be more sensible, and more moral, to require a prescription for antibiotics, which are often misused with potentially disastrous results if bacteria thereby evolve immunity, whereas drugs like morphine should not require a prescription since their abuse can only directly harm reckless users.

    Or does my reasoning here fail the strict logical reasoning that mathematics teaches us, as Na's recent blog post just above made me think?

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  4. Unknown14 July 2018 at 23:16

    I think online medicine is very convenient but dangerous in the same time. Different medicine use in deferent symptom. I not sure everyone know about the medicine well so I think that should have pharmacists to tell you which medicine you can take. I think taking medicine is very impact to your life. If you take wrong medicine, you will not get well unfortunately maybe die. I think the government should make the law to control some medicine or some people particularly the kids to buy online medicine.

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